Business & Tech

Unemployment Rate Up in County, Town

Number of jobless residents climbs as the private sector sees a dip of 7,000 jobs across Long Island.

Long Island, Nassau County and Hempstead Town all saw an increase in the jobless rate in January, according to statistics released by the state Department of Labor Thursday.

Nassau County

In Nassau County, the unemployment rate increased to 7.5 percent in January 2011, up from 6.6 percent in December 2010. However, it was at 7.8 percent in January 2010. There were 50,516 unemployed Nassau County residents in January, up from 45,193 in December. That increase is almost entirely due to seasonal holiday employment opportunities that ended in the new year, Michael Crowell, the Labor Department’s senior economist for Long Island, said. Still, there is an improvement over January 2010, when 52,867 were unemployed.

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“Most startling is that the January numbers don’t show a decline in local government education,” Crowell said, referring to public school district jobs. He added that during the last three to four months there were layoffs in local school districts, but by January the rate ceased, even showing an increase.

Town of Hempstead

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The jobless rate in the Town of Hempstead also saw an increase, up .9 percent from December 2010. However the 7.9 percent unemployment number is lower than last January, when it sat at 8.2 percent.

Long Island

Long Island is adding jobs, but apparently not as many as originally thought in 2010. Also, more people were unemployed than previously stated.

After its annual process of factoring in unemployment tax records, to ensure the accuracy of its earlier reports, the New York State Labor Department revised its numbers, saying Wednesday that the number of private sector jobs in 2010 actually fell by 7,000.

The new total number of 2010 private sector jobs is 1,017,600. That’s nearly 46,000 below Long Island’s pre-recession peak of 1,063,500, in 2007.

Prior to the revision, the Labor Department had reported that Long Island’s private sector began adding jobs in April. Post revision, however, it was revealed that the gains began in July, said Crowell.

“The good thing is we’re adding jobs, but not as fast as we like to see, but at least it’s positive,” Crowell said.

On Long Island, private sector jobs increased in January by 5,600, bringing the total number of jobs to 986,900, up by .6 percent from a year earlier. Top gains were seen in education and health services, with 4,200 new jobs; trade, transportation and utilities, with 2,900 new jobs; and professional and business services, up by 2,700.

In addition, the department also revised unemployment figures for 2010. On Long Island, the average unemployment rate increased from 7.1 percent to 7.4 percent. However, for the month of January 2011, Long Island’s unemployment rate is at 8 percent, with 116,352 people unemployed, down from 120.135, at a rate of 8.2 percent a year earlier.

The Labor Department will release numbers for February on March 24.

(Jaime Sumersille contributed to this article.)


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